Nevada Bar Associations

The state of Nevada is famous for having very lax laws in areas that are often heavily regulated by other states. For example, Nevada is the only state in the nation where prostitution is legal. Therefore, it is not surprising that Nevada is a popular place for lawyers since there are many laws with grey areas that allow for different interpretations and plenty of litigation. Nevada’s popularity as a workplace for attorneys is exhibited in the fact that there is consecutively a ten percent increase each year in the number of people sitting for the Nevada bar exam.

Nevada is home to over 10,000 lawyers that are licensed to practice law in the state. However, only about 8,500 of these licensed attorneys are actively practicing in Nevada. Over half of these lawyers at located in the most populous county in Nevada, Clark County. Many of the lawyers that live in Clark County work in the city of Las Vegas, which is Clark County’s biggest city.

There are several different kinds of bar associations to meet the different professional and social needs of the thousands of lawyers that work and live in Nevada. All attorneys that are licensed to practice law in Nevada are required to belong to the State Bar of Nevada, in part because the State Bar of Nevada serves as the regulator for Nevada’s legal profession. Other statewide bar associations have voluntary memberships, and they are dedicated towards aiding special interest groups. Certain bar associations that are active over the entire state are focused on supporting certain minority groups present in the legal community of Nevada, such as the Nevada Society of Italian American Lawyers, while other state-wide bar associations for whom membership is voluntary tend to be geared towards a specific legal practice area, including the Nevada Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

In addition to the numerous bar associations whose membership extend to the entire state, there are a wide variety of regional bar associations in Nevada. Several of these bar associations were created to help out certain ethnic and gender groups achieve success in the legal profession, including the Asian Bar Association of Las Vegas and the Northern Nevada Women Lawyers Association. Other regional organizations exist to increase fraternization amongst lawyers that practice in a specific part of Nevada, such as the Washoe County Bar Association and Nevada’s First Judicial District Bar Association.